Recent Blog Posts
-
Cable Companies Assail Rural Phone Subsidies
Nov 06 20092:16 pm EDT -
Windows 7 Sales Are Strong
Nov 06 20097:46 am EDT -
Biotech Firm Light Sciences Raises $35 Million
Nov 05 20095:57 pm EDT -
Tough VC Market Claims Frazier Technology
Nov 05 20098:02 am EDT -
Digby Buys Mobile Commerce Site Movaya
Nov 04 20091:08 pm EDT
Links
- Engadget

- Pandora

- GigaOM

- USA TODAY Tech

- Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog

- Somewhat Frank's tech conference list

- BuzzTracker Tech

- The Long Tail

- Tom Foremski

- Roger McGuinn's Folk Den

- John Battelle's SearchBlog

- Mark Cuban's blog

- SciTech Daily

- Romenesko

- Kevin Maney's site

- Steven Johnson

- Marc Andreessen

- TechCrunch

- Fred Wilson

- paidContent

- Spiedies, mmmm

Good Luck with the Bribing, Microsoft
The joke back in the dot-com era was that you could set up a Web site that did nothing but sell dollars for 90 cents, lose money on every transaction but still get a huge valuation because you'd get so many eyeballs. I guess Microsoft didn't realize it was a joke.
The company, to try to win some search market share back from Google, has created Live Search Cashback -- a program that offers rebates to people who use Microsoft's search to buy certain products. From the looks of things, we're generally talking about discounts of maybe 5% -- the kind of discount you'd get from, say, Old Navy by having an Old Navy card. Some analysts think it will work and win Microsoft a chunk of traffic. Lots of others think the strategy is bound to fail.
Personally, I don't see it. People are flocking to sites that give them huge discounts on expensive items, like designer clothes. But shaving a few dollars by going to a different search site? On the Web, that's like driving across town to Shoppers Food Warehouse to save $10 on your family's grocery bill. Most people won't bother.
Microsoft has $24 billion in cash. There are about 200 million U.S. Web users. Maybe the company can just offer everyone $100 to switch search engines. Think that would work?






